Medical personnel have used spinal traction therapy to treat various back conditions such as, for example, spinal instability, degenerative disc disease, spinal stenosis, lumbrosacral sprain or strain, chronic sciatica, disc herniation, spondylolisthesis, lumbar osteoarthritis, and facet pathology. Spinal traction therapy can be provided by two general classes of devices as discussed in greater detail hereafter.
Gravity inversion therapy involves suspending a user in a head-down position so that the user's own body weight provides the necessary traction force due to the force of gravity. In one type of gravity inversion device, a pair of hinged, padded cylinders are secured around a user's ankles so that the user's body weight decompresses the ankles, knees, and spinal cord. A second type of gravity inversion device utilizes an adjustable footboard and a horizontal bar which, when the user is disposed in an inverted position, is placed above the lower portion of a user's hips so that the weight of the user's torso decompresses the user's spine.
Gravity inversion therapy devices suffer from a number of disadvantages. For example, not only are users typically afraid to be hung upside down, but also users may have feelings of disorientation and dizziness both during and after the gravity inversion therapy. Further, blood rushing to the head during use of a gravity inversion device causes pressure on the eyes and sinuses and increases the risk of popping a blood vessel or stroke, especially when the user has high blood pressure. Additionally, gravity inversion devices are difficult to use for those who are not particularly athletically talented.
Therapeutic tables have been utilized for providing traction to a user's lumbar region when the user is disposed in a horizontal, prone position. One such device includes a frame and a table top. The table top includes an upper-body section rigid with respect to the frame and a lower-body section slideable with respect to the frame. A pair of hand grips on the upper-body section are accessible by a user with the user's arms above the head to anchor the upper body. A pelvic belt anchor is attached to the lower-body section of the table top. A cylinder and piston assembly moves the lower-body section of the table top to cyclically increase and decrease the distance between the hand grips and the pelvic belt anchor. This action cyclically applies traction to the lumbar region of the user's spine. While these devices are satisfactory for their intended uses, they are quite expensive to manufacture and maintain and do not allow a user to actively control the amount of traction applied. Additionally, they cannot be easily adapted for portability.